On the Reservation

     Whenever anyone discusses any topic with the word “reservation” in it, I always think about the Indian reservations throughout the United States. After the Europeans arrived on “Native American” soil, they wanted to claim as many territories as they can because of the “colonization race” that began between the European nations in order to gain national prestige. That was the beginning of a series of events that “exiled” Native Americans from their own land. Then after the United States came into existence, they tried to imitate the methods the British and French used in Canada in order to gain more land for the Americans to live on. In order to obtain land from the Native Americans without causing a war, reservations were established to move Native Americans to designated plots of land, which seemed to the Natives that the Americans were trading them land for land. Many Natives realized too late that the land they were given were nothing compared to the lush farmland that they once had. Without a strong military to fight back against the Americans, the Natives were forced to live on their reservations to this day.

     When the Americans thought of the idea of putting Native Americans on reservations, did they consider what would happen to the natives if they were to live on these reservations? If the Americans fought the Revolutionary War in order to be freed from oppression, it would be contradictory to their values by oppressing the natives. The Americans did not obtain the land through fair-trading but by oppressive methods that many Americans just accepted. In addition, the natives were an agricultural society but the land they were given cannot sustain any types of food so they were forced to travel to towns and work for meager wages. Similarly, they are no different from African Americans who were once working on plantations, which meant the natives became somewhat of an enslaved race. In addition, Montana 1948 by Larry Watson demonstrated that some Americans even despised or does not value Native Americans’ culture. For example: Julian Hayden stated that it was no big deal that his son, Frank Hayden molested his Native American patients and Wes Hayden thought that the Native American women did not know that Frank was trying to help them. 

     Their situation in the present is already set in stones so it is useless to pity them but if groups of people protested against their unfair treatment back then, the natives might be living better lives in the present. Still I wonder what our lives would be like if they were given better treatment because in order to gain something, something else must be traded for it.